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Coinbase looking to sway U.S. politics with PAC

As the crypto industry looks to gain more users, Coinbase is looking for more sway in U.S. politics. The popular cryptocurrency exchange has formed its own political action committee (PAC), which are groups formed for the sole purpose of raising money to influence U.S. elections. PACs usually represent a specific business or ideological interests.

The news was reported by Politico's Colin Wilhelm and was confirmed via a Federal Election Commission filing that was made public Friday The filing revealed that the exchange formed the "Coinbase, Inc. Political Action Committee" in June 2018.

It's the first PAC formed by a cryptocurrency organization!

Coinbase, founded in June 2012 by Brian Armstrong and Fred Ehrsamis, is a digital currency exchange headquartered in San Francisco, California. They broker exchanges of Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, Ethereum, and Litecoin with fiat currencies in 32 countries, and bitcoin transactions and storage in 190 countries.

Most of the money Coinbase makes is from the volume of trades, charging both the buyer and seller usually a fee between 0.25 percent and 1 percent of the total transaction size through the site. The six-year-old company crossed the $1 billion mark in revenue last year. In May, Coinbase said it would revamp its trading technology and services to attract more investors, hedge funds and high-frequency trading firms.

This political move shows the high ambitions for cryptocurrency. Bitcoin, first released as open-source software in 2009, is generally considered the first decentralized cryptocurrency. Since then, over 4,000 altcoin (alternative coin) variants have been created.